Page 98 - The Midnight Library

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that she momentarily stopped worr ying about her father and having to give

a speech she really wasn’t prepared for.
But as she swam her mood changed. She thought of those years her dad
had gained and her mother had lost, and as she thought she became angrier
and angrier at her father, which fuelled her to swim even faster. She had

always imagined her parents were too proud to get divorced, so instead let
their resentments fester inside, projecting them onto their children, and
Nora in particular. And swimming had been her only ticket to approval.
Here, in this life she was in now, she had pursued a career to keep him

happy, while sacrificing her own relationships, her own love of music, her
own dreams beyond anything that didn’t involve a medal, her own life. And
her father had paid this back by having an affair with this Nadia person and
leaving her mother and he still got terse with her. Aer all that.

Screw him. Or at least this version of him.
As she switched to freestyle she realised it wasn’t her fault that her parents
had never been able to love her the way parents were meant to: without
condition. It wasn’t her fault her mother focused on her ever y flaw, starting

with the asymmetr y of her ears. No. It went back even earlier than that. e
first problem had been that Nora had dared, somehow, to arrive into
existence at a time when her parents’ marriage was relatively fragile. Her
mother fell into depression and her father turned to tumblers of single malt.

She did thirty more lengths, and her mind calmed and she started to feel
free, just her and the water.
But when she eventually got out of the pool and went back to her room
she dressed in the only clean clothes in her hotel room (smart navy trouser

suit) and stared at the inside of her suitcase. She felt the profound loneliness
emanating from it. ere was a copy of her own book. She was staring out
from the cover with steely-eyed determination and wearing a Team GB
swimsuit. She picked it up and saw, in small print, that it was ‘co-written

with Amanda Sands’.
Amanda Sands, the internet told her, was ‘ghost-writer to a whole host of
sporting celebrities’.
en she looked at her watch. It was time to head to the lobby.

Standing waiting for her were two smartly dressed people she didn’t

recognise and one she most definitely did. He was wearing a suit and was